Building a new website is one of the biggest investments a bank or credit union will make. But how do you know what you should actually be spending? In this episode of the Hit Record Podcast, Meredith Olmstead sits down with Duncan Craig to discuss what drives website costs, where institutions should invest, and why the cheapest option isn't always the smartest one.
1. Your website is one of your most valuable branches. For many consumers/members, your website is their first impression of your institution. A strong website should do more than look good. It should build trust, answer questions, and make it easy for people to take the next step.
2. A great website should grow with your institution. Launching a new website isn't the finish line. The best websites are built to evolve with new products, new content, and changing member expectations without requiring a complete rebuild.
3. The right partner is just as important as the budget. Website projects are about more than design. Working with an experienced partner who understands strategy, user experience, and long-term growth will deliver far more value than simply choosing the lowest price.
Transcription:
Meredith Olmstead:
Hi there. I'm Meredith Olmsted, CEO and founder of FI Grow Solutions. We are a digital marketing and sales consulting agency. We work exclusively with credit unions and community banks. And I am here with one of our agency partners who is also the principal of our partner agency that we work with all the time on website projects, Duncan Craig. Hi, Duncan.
Duncan Craig:
Hi, how's it going?
Meredith Olmstead:
Good, good. So Duncan and I are revisiting an old podcast of ours that we did, it's so crazy, two and a half years ago. In October, it'll be three years. So this is back in 2023. It's so funny. I went back to find... Because I still send that podcast to people, and it's about how much people should spend on a bank or credit union website, like a regional bank or credit union website.
We're not talking about Bank of America, but these are our clients. And so I still send that, and it's almost three years old. And I was like, well, maybe we should redo this, Duncan, because it feels like it's a little bit out of date. But the funniest thing about it is that it's really not that out of date.
Duncan Craig:
Yeah.
Meredith Olmstead:
So we're redoing it ish, but we're going to just hit some highlights. But really, the numbers have stayed pretty constant, which I was so proud of us, honestly, or impressed with that almost three years later, our suggested ballpark budget is really still the same. It's very similar.
How do we explain that? I mean, basically, we've added some efficiencies. You guys have done a lot of work to really make sure that your development process is very streamlined, and we are utilizing some AI for starting points and for help with some starting points in content crafting.
So we don't have to increase our content-writing rates for pages to align with salaries. You know what I mean? So we're a little bit faster, a little bit more efficient with content in that sense while still making sure that it is AEO and SEO optimized, of course, and it has the right tone and all of that.
But what else? Can you think of anything else that's helped us keep the budget number the same?
Duncan Craig:
Yeah. Well, I think when we put together plans years ago, we came up with a very consultative approach, very much working with our clients to figure out the best approach that's going to work for them.
And in doing so, we came up with a process that was efficient to begin with and has become even more efficient, but it's the right way to do it. And so it's not like we're constantly reinventing the way we do this on every single project.
We've found the right recipe for making these websites really work well and really give the flexibility that these banks and credit unions need to be able to really then take it and expand it and make it work and increase the shelf life of the product to the point where they're not having to redo the website every year or as frequently as they used to be able to or used to have to.
So on the development side, as you mentioned or briefly alluded to, we still do everything with our development team really diving in and coding everything out and building everything in a way that's going to work for each individual business.
However, there are certain things that we just know every single bank and credit union is going to need. And so we have built some efficiencies by building out modules that we can then take and customize.
So it's not taking a template website and just making some customizations to it. It's still building from the ground up, building the right website for each individual organization. However, we can say, "Oh yes, we have this great resource center that we can take and then drop into ."
Meredith Olmstead:
As a model. Yeah.
Duncan Craig:
As a model, and then use that as the baseline to build upon. And that has created some great efficiencies so that even with inflation and as everything, of course, everything in the world gets more expensive every year, we've been able to make it more efficient and keep that price pretty stable, which I think is great.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah, I'm so proud of us, honestly. I think it's funny, but I think that obviously it's driven by the number of pages, at least from the content side of the project for our side of the project, because if we're building a 50, delivering 50 finished pages versus 80 finished pages, that impacts your budget. But I still think we're in the neighborhood of about $150,000 and that is really a starting budget.
Sometimes you can get a little bit lower than that for our clients and for the projects that we build, sometimes you get a little bit higher than that depending on the size. And it's so funny, we still get pushback.
We still are even three years later with the price tag staying basically the same, people are still like, "That's too expensive." Honestly, I think they just think everything's too... They think things are just too expensive just for thinking things are too expensive for the sake of it.
Duncan Craig:
Yeah.
Meredith Olmstead:
I don't even really think they're putting a lot of thought into it at this point because the funniest thing is we'll get... I was just telling you the real world example, we have a project that we won where they came back at the very last minute and they were like, "So is there any way you can make this a little bit less expensive or a little bit more efficient to maximize our budget?" And we were like, "What do you mean? What do you want us to not deliver?"
Duncan Craig:
Right.
Meredith Olmstead:
And I think there was one small little additional part of the project that we had added in and we were like, "Okay, well, we can take that out. That'll save you $5,000 on a $150,000 budget." You know what I mean?
Duncan Craig:
Yeah. Yeah.
Meredith Olmstead:
That was it. And they were like, "Okay, great. Let's go." I mean, there wasn't even a real reason for them to push back on the budget except that they just thought maybe they should try to get a better deal.
Duncan Craig:
Yeah. Right.
Meredith Olmstead:
It's just funny.
Duncan Craig:
Yeah. I mean, I always relate things to home improvement projects because everybody goes through them at some point, and it's a little bit like if you hired somebody, a contractor to come in and do something on your house and you say, "Hey, could you do it for 25% less?" They're going to say, "I mean, I could, but I'm probably going to do 25% less... I'm going to have to do 25% less work."
Meredith Olmstead:
Sure. Yeah.
Duncan Craig:
"So what do you want?"
Meredith Olmstead:
Or give you 25% less of a quality of... The flooring will be cheaper.
Duncan Craig:
Exactly.
Meredith Olmstead:
Or whatever it is. You'll get cheaper appliances.
Duncan Craig:
Yes, exactly.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah.
Duncan Craig:
These aren't arbitrary numbers that... They are tied to very specific things. And it's worth the investment is the bottom line too. I think we said this in the last podcast that we did on this, but it still applies.
If you have... Look at the last branch you built for your bank and see what each line item costs, how much did you spend on lighting, on carpet, on desks, whatever it was, and then relate it to this, which is going to be your most important branch that you have that's opened 24 hours a day and it's probably going to be in line with what you spent on something like lighting in that branch.
Meredith Olmstead:
You put three things together for your recent branch rebuild or recent branch opening and that budget itself would cover the website that we are suggesting is a great option for you and you're going to have 10,00 people a month coming or a week or whatever, depending on your size, coming to the website and 200 people going to your branch. I mean, obviously those are made up numbers, but it is crazy that we still get all this pushback.
Definitely the way we are building websites on the... We are a HubSpot shop and so we do build on the HubSpot content management system and it has this modular approach where each of the sections of the website are drag and drop as their own little entities basically.
But the really cool thing about that is you can add a module next spring, brand new if you come up with some new functionality that you really want on your website, you could add one module that might cost a few thousand dollars or maybe $5,000 to develop or whatever it might be instead of having to rebuild the entire website.
We have our clients, some of our clients are, these websites are stretching five, six... I mean, I have people we built our first website, one of our first website builds that we did together with you all has not been redesigned yet.
Duncan Craig:
Yeah.
Meredith Olmstead:
And it's, I mean, we're talking like six, seven years.
Duncan Craig:
Yeah.
Meredith Olmstead:
So it's pretty impressive to think about the length that you can get out of a really well-built digital branch on a good content management system that is integrated into your marketing automation and into your marketing efforts on an ongoing basis. So I think when you have a really good system, like a HubSpot that can connect to your core, that can bring data in on a real-time basis. All those kinds of things make it a very robust product in the end.
The last thing I was going to ask you though, or that I was going to mention is when you're trying... So we're going to include the old podcast when we share this one because it's all very relevant still.
But one of the things that I wanted to add in this conversation around fighting for bigger budgets and making it clear to your organization why you need bigger budgets is let the agency or the people who are trying to provide the product do that hard work for you. And by that, I mean give them access to some of your other decision makers in this process.
One of the things that we have instituted through our sales process is we will not provide a finished proposal unless we are allowed to present that proposal to several of the signers and decision makers on the larger project. So we are not just presenting it to two marketing people and then they have to take it up to their executive team or their board and try to make the case for this budget.
I mean, a lot of marketers can do a great job with that, but why put yourself through it? Because what ends up happening is when you are constantly complaining in your institution about not having big enough budgets, people tune you out.
They stop believing. It's this magic of third party endorsement that happens with consulting or with outside third parties when they come in and they might say literally the exact same thing that you've been saying for the last six months or year or two years, and everybody in the organization goes, "Huh, you know what? You're right. That's a great idea. Let's do it."
Duncan Craig:
Exactly.
Meredith Olmstead:
And the person who was there saying it the whole time is like, "Are you freaking kidding me? I literally have been saying this for a year. Nobody's been listening." And it happens in every industry; it happens with a thousand different topics. It's this third-party endorsement phenomenon, basically.
So it's like, rather than trying to make the case for budget yourself, let somebody else come in and do it for you. Do you find that that helps with... Because I know you're in healthcare too, not just in credit unions, but in other kinds of big industries. Does that help with those conversations there as well?
Duncan Craig:
Yeah, definitely. This is what we do, and we can explain it so well, not even as a sales pitch, as the people who build this.
Meredith Olmstead:
Right.
Duncan Craig:
We understand the ins and outs of why you should do things a certain way. And that's not to say that the internal marketing team may not have a lot of those same answers, but often, to your point, when it's coming from us, we bring that expertise to the table and we can very confidently explain exactly why you should do it this way, why it's worth the investment, why maybe you shouldn't do it this other way that perhaps someone else is telling you you should do.
And so by bringing us in, we can make that case for you, and ultimately, everybody at the table ends up looking smart.
Meredith Olmstead:
Right. Right.
Duncan Craig:
So there's no reason not to do it.
Meredith Olmstead:
You get your bigger budget.
Duncan Craig:
Yeah.
Meredith Olmstead:
The marketer might get a little upset or frustrated because, hey, they've been saying this all along, but they still get what they want, and you end up with a better product, and you end up with an organization that's more bought in because they... "Now, oh, okay, you know what? I'm open to this now. I'm thinking about this differently.
You know what? You're right. And, oh yeah, this individual here has been saying this all along and it's really nice now I hear this from you and you explained how other industries are doing it or how other credit unions or banks like us are spending what kinds of budgets they're spending. Now I feel better about this whole topic, can take it to the board, get it approved and move forward with a bigger project."
Duncan Craig:
Right.
Meredith Olmstead:
So it's definitely something, and so unfortunately, sometimes we don't get access. We don't do it. So recently I had somebody who was pushing back on that, and they were like, "Well, we'll need to see the proposal first, and then we can put you in front of our decision makers and our CEO."
And I said, "No, that's not how we do it. I'm sorry, but these are very complicated deliverables, very complicated projects that have a lot of nuance to them, and we like to be able to explain the value and the budget and be able to answer questions in that call with you and your decision-makers.
This is how we deliver our proposals. So if that's not going to work, we aren't a good fit." And we've had to say that to folks because I think, honestly, my theory is that sometimes people are just checking boxes for vendor due diligence, but really I think it's also just not trying to find the cheapest option. This is not a price-driven... I mean, sometimes you get the cheapest option; you're not going to get a lot of functionality. Yeah.
Duncan Craig:
Right. Yeah. I mean, you always get what you pay for in everything in life and we all know that. And I think that one of the key things is that agencies like us, we're not all building the exact same thing. These aren't widgets that are made the same way in the same factory and you're trying to cut into the profit margin, whatever.
These are built and crafted by experts and everybody has a slightly different approach and we believe strongly in our approach and in investing in it. And so ultimately it's worth the investment and you need to be able to justify all the work that goes into it. And so bringing us in to be able to explain that I think is really important.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah, excellent. I totally agree. Awesome. Well, Duncan, thank you so much for taking the time to revisit this topic for how much you should spend on your Bank or Credit Union website. We're going to share this new updated version of the podcast and we're going to reshare the older one because I think both of them can go hand in hand, but love this conversation and excited to keep moving forward with all the projects we've been working on together. So I appreciate your time.
Duncan Craig:
Yeah.
Meredith Olmstead:
Thank you so much for listening. Hopefully you have learned something good that you needed to do or learned something about budgets and websites. If you would like to learn more, please visit us at figrow.com. We have lots of other great podcasts, blogs, case studies, all kinds of resources. So we'd love for you to join our community there, and otherwise let's just all get out there and make it happen.